Computing and networking technology have transformed our world. As the amount of information communicated over networks has increased, high speed transmission has become ever more critical. Many high speed data transmission networks rely on optical transceivers and similar devices for facilitating transmission and reception of digital data embodied in the form of optical signals over optical fibers. Optical networks are thus found in a wide variety of high speed applications ranging from as modest as a small Local Area Network (LAN) to as grandiose as the backbone of the Internet.
Typically, data transmission in such networks is implemented by way of an optical transmitter (also referred to as an electro-optic transducer), such as a laser or Light Emitting Diode (LED). The electro-optic transducer emits light when current is passed there through, the intensity of the emitted light being a function of the current magnitude through the transducer. Data reception is generally implemented by way of an optical receiver (also referred to as an optoelectronic transducer), an example of which is a photodiode. The optoelectronic transducer receives light and generates a current, the magnitude of the generated current being a function of the intensity of the received light.
Various other components are also employed by the optical transceiver to aid in the control of the optical transmit and receive components, as well as the processing of various data and other signals. For example, such optical transceivers typically include an electro-optic transducer driver (e.g., referred to as a “laser driver” when used to drive a laser signal) configured to control the operation of the optical transmitter in response to various control inputs. The optical transceiver also generally includes an amplifier (e.g., often referred to as a “post-amplifier”) configured to perform various operations with respect to certain parameters of a data signal received by the optical receiver. A controller circuit (hereinafter referred to as the “controller”) controls the operation of the laser driver and post-amplifier.
During the operation of an optical transceiver, it is often important to evaluate the quality of a received data signal. One tool often used to help in the evaluation process is an eye diagram or pattern. As is well known, an eye diagram is formed by superimposing a long stream of random bits on one another on an oscilloscope or like device. The bit streams include the transitions from high to low and low to high. Several system performance measures can be derived by analyzing the eye diagram. For example, if the signals are too long, too short, poorly synchronized with the system clock, too high, too low, too noisy, too slow to change, or have too much undershoot or overshoot, this can be observed from the eye diagram. In particular, an open eye diagram corresponds to minimal signal distortion.
The eye diagram may also be used to observe the cross-point. The cross-point is the point on the eye diagram where the transitions from high to low and low to high occur. For example, a digital low is often represented by a 0 volt signal and a digital high is represented by a 1 volt signal. Accordingly, in an ideal system, the cross-point would be observed at 0.5 volts.
One important task performed by the post-amplifier is to determine if the bits of the received data signal represent a digital 0 (low) or a digital 1 (high). In order to perform such a task, circuitry in the post-amplifier reads the received data signal and makes the determination. In an ideal system with a cross-point at 0.5 volts, any signal of 0.49 volts and below would typically be determined to be a low and any signal of 0.51 volts or higher would typically be determined to be a high. However, it is the often case that noise and other signal offsets caused by fiber impurities, transistor mismatch, and the like cause distortion in the received signals. For example, added noise may cause a signal to be incorrectly determined as a high signal. It would therefore be advantageous to have the ability to adjust the cross-point of the received signals up or down (i.e., higher or lower than 0.5 volts) to help compensate for any signal impurities.